MY JOURNEY THROUGH PREGNANCY AND MOTHERHOOD AS AN EXPAT IN QATAR

12 Week Scan, DNA Test and Gender Reveal

Back in April we had our 12 week scan. In the days leading up to it I was a total wreck! Our previous 12 week scan with our angel baby completely broke us so as you can imagine, this time I was a total bag of nerves!

At this appointment, Dr Naseem performed an ultrasound. When we first went in, we could immediately see that the baby was sleeping and upside down. Dr Naseem advised us to go for a stroll, drink some tea or coffee and eat something sweet in the hope that it would wake baby up, as she needed to get a clear view of the back of the baby’s neck to measure the nuchal translucency (NT). It was the NT in the first pregnancy that gave us the first indication there was something wrong.

After managing a 10 minute walk in the nearly 40c heat, we headed back inside but to my disappointment, the baby was still sleeping and clearly had no intention of waking anytime soon. The doctor advised to come back in the evening. Of course I was a little disappointed. I just wanted to know that the baby was ok. When we finally had another ultrasound that evening, we were delighted to see the baby moving and kicking and swimming around. More importantly, Dr Naseem could see the NT on the back of baby’s neck and everything looked okay. We were buzzing with excitement and so overcome with total relief and joy!

The nurses also took a blood test that would screen for Down’s Syndrome, Turner’s Syndrome, Edward’s Syndrome and various other micro-deletions.

We were offered two options for the test:

Harmony- This is a DNA screening test that reports if you have a high or low risk of having a child with a chromosomal abnormality such as Down’s, Turner’s or Edward’s syndromes. Your results will highlight if you are low or high risk but either result is not a clear guarantee one way or the other.

Verifi- This is another test that examines and measures your DNA. Rather than stating if you are high or low risk, this test will outline if there any actual discrepancies with the amount of chromosomes present in the blood.

We opted for the Verifi test. It is a bit more expensive, however we felt that this test would give us the reassurance we needed. We received the results a week later and everything was clear! We were so relieved and just totally grateful and thankful to God that our dream of becoming parents was now becoming just that little bit more real!

If you are planning to have a baby or are already expecting I would absolutely recommend having either of these tests done. Either here in Qatar or wherever your home country maybe. Cost of the Harmony Prenatal test is 3000QAR and the Verifi Prenatal test is 5000QAR. They are quite pricey but most definitely worthwhile for your own piece of mind. It’s definitely worth checking to see if your insurer will cover you.

One additional highlight of the test is that it also revealed the sex of the baby! We were thrilled to discover that we are expecting a little princess! We didn’t reveal the gender until 16 weeks. It was difficult to decide what we would do for our gender reveal, but after some minor differences in artistic direction (I got a bit carried away and my husband reminded me that, no, it’s not a Mariah Carey style video extravaganza) we finally came to a compromise. Check out our gender reveal video on my instagram page @lady_m_xx